


the rain will wash us clean

by diwata



Series: the eleventh hour [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 15:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11293908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diwata/pseuds/diwata
Summary: “My life wasn’t so bad, after all, I married you and made some pastries.”“And children,” she adds, torn between laughter and incredulity.“And grandchildren,” Jacob says, “in Gryffinpuff.”Jacob buries his brother.





	the rain will wash us clean

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second to last piece in this series. I love Jacob a bunch, and I hope you enjoy!

Jacob whistles a sad tune, checking his fingernails for any trace of dirt. The black soil is packed beneath them, under his skin, and smeared across his hands and face. Covered in sweat and grime, he inspects the communal grave, the fruit of his labor. For hours, he toils with a shovel, digging to make a grave large enough to accommodate his squadron. The higher-ups couldn’t be bothered with such a task, with the war almost at its end, any allocation of resources to the dead would be a sunk cost. Two soldiers from another unit, Frank and Ernest, come and help for a while, bringing their own deceased and talking about an armistice, years of war and death to be ended with a piece of paper, honored on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“Are we supposed to be happy?” Jacob asks, and the other two men smile at him, the white of their teeth a stark contrast to the black of the earth and of the war that stains their clothing and their skin. Frank rests his foot on the top of the blade, perching his chin on top of the handle.

“I think so,” he says. “War’s over and all.” Ernest heaves another heavy pile of soil out of the pit. He keeps his head down.

Jacob wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand before studying his palms and the angry blisters that are forming amongst the callouses.  “Yeah,” he mutters. “It’s over, alright.” The bodies rest above them, covered by a worn linen sheet.

They climb out one by one in silence and lower the bodies in with a rope. They each take a handful of dirt to sprinkle over the dead. Jacob grips the soil tightly in his fist, letting the rest pour out through the spaces between his knuckles. “Should we say something?” Frank asks.

Ernest clears his throat. The three stand in silence for a while, holding their service caps over their hearts. “To victory,” Ernest finally says, “to the eleventh hour.” He picks up his shovel and begins dumping dirt into the pit. They follow suit.

Jacob stares at the abundance of white crosses that commemorate his fallen comrades. They are the crosses he will carry with him as he walks away from this strange land and equally strange war. They have names, like his brother Cliff and old schoolmate Bill and virgin Paul and aspiring actor David and Harvard-bound Samuel and musician Tony and womanizer Daniel and - he really needs to stop thinking about them. He could never stop thinking about them. Later, while Jacob and Frank are outside sharing a beer, they hear a gunshot from the tent. They rush to see what’s happened and find Ernest with a bullet in his head. “To the eleventh hour,” Frank says as they lower his body into the ground.

“To victory,” Jacob replies emptily.

* * *

Jacob’s heard the term _missing in action_ before, and it’s never turned out to be something good. Missing in action is as good as dead, and if not dead it means defected, which means they’d be dead soon enough. No one’s ever too good at hiding from either side during a war, and spies never fared well because they suffered animosity in equal volumes from both ends. This is what Jacob thinks when Theseus delivers the news of Tina’s capture, and he feels terrible because he can feel Queenie crumbling next to him. He knows that she hears him thinking these terrible thoughts, but Tina’s disappearance and Europe make memories of The Great War fresh again, as if he can peer into the Seine and see his brother.

 _I’m sorry_ , Jacob thinks, hoping Queenie can hear him amidst the maelstrom of thoughts and bad news. She nods at him in affirmation before Theseus launches into the details of a potential rescue mission. He’s a good man, assertive and attentive, not unlike Tina. Whether he is nervous about his partner is hard to tell, but Jacob’s been around enough decorated captains and lieutenants to recognize the older man’s anxiety. Newt is a mess beside him, pacing back and forth in their small shared space. Queenie rolls her eyes at him; there’s been a tension between them ever since they arrived in Europe and Tina embarked on her mission. Jacob has been managing relations between the two for the past month, dividing the time between his best friend and his fiancee almost equally and trying to determine the source of the problem.

“The _problem_ ,” Queenie snaps, “is that he’s a total Dorcas.”

“Sweetheart, I’m really tryin’ to speak your language, but what the hell is a Dorcas?”

The Great War was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but they’ve all been pulled into another one, even more strange for Jacob because this war is a war of magic and sorcery and Dorcases (he’s still yet to figure out what it means). War might be the only thing his world and Queenie’s world have in common. Theseus and Tina would always talk about the good in war, about those who need protection, and he’d chuckle. He’s too jaded to believe in any of that spiel, but he does believe in good. But there is no good to be found on the battlefield, because war isn’t about the greater good. It’s not about freedom or democracy. It’s not about winning, either. It’s about a fear, a fear of nothing, that distorts itself in soldiers’ hearts to be the fear of everything.

* * *

Jacob stumbles upon an abandoned trench, knees buckling under the weight of his older brother. It’s filthy, but any space away from gunshot and grenades is sanctuary to an injured soldier. Droplets on his skin tell him of the impending storm coming from the west. Jacob unpacks his haversack and lays out the groundsheet. Then, he sets Cliff against the sandbags carefully before setting a tarp above them to keep dry. Cliff shivers, looking gaunt and sickly, face covered in brown and grey stubble. His brow is furrowed in distress, patches of dark brown hair sticking to his forehead, matted with dirt and sweat. “Cold,” he mutters faintly, “need fire, heat.” Jacob shrugs off his greatcoat and wraps his brother in it. He pulls out his water bottle and tilts Cliff’s head up to meet the mouth. He drinks hungrily and Jacob sees him slowly come back to life.

“Fire’s a no-go,” he explains delicately, “can’t have the enemy finding the hideout.” Jacob pulls out their dinner from the mess tin, hard biscuits and bully beef. He holds out the rations to his companion before helping himself to the canned meat.

Cliff grunts in response, leaning his head back to rest against the wall. He soaks the biscuit in water before biting into it. “Hey Jake,” he says, the color returning to his face, “I finally figured out what to do when we go back home.”

“What’s that?” He urges Cliff to eat the bully beef and he obliges, taking the tin from his brother.

With a mouth full of corned beef and a bullet hole in his left abdomen, Cliff grins at Jacob and declares, “We’ll open a bakery.”

He shakes his hand. “Alright, I gotta hold you to that,” he says soberly, though the undertone of amusement peeks through, “and we’ll call it Kowalski Brothers.”

“You wanna sound like some phony Broadway duo or do you wanna sound like a legit institution?” Cliff shakes his head. “Kowalski Baked Goods, now that’s a neat name.” The older man suddenly blanches, hunching his shoulders forward.

Jacob presses the back of his hand to Cliff’s forehead, noting a fever. His clothes cling to his body, damp with cold sweat. He shivers, wrapping Jacob’s coat around him reflexively. “You good?” Jacob asks, dipping a rag in cold water and dabbing at his brow. “Hey, Cliff-”

The man shifts in his seat before lowering himself onto the groundsheet. “The _paczki_ ,” he groans as he rests on the floor.

“Gonna check your wound,” he informs Cliff firmly. Jacob unbuttons Cliff’s coat to find the wound has bled through the wrappings and his undershirt. He unravels the bandages. It looks terrible: red and swollen with pus oozing from the gunshot site. He cleans his hands with the washing kit before grabbing the rum. Jacob soaks a fresh rag in the alcohol before pressing it to the wound. Cliff cries out upon contact, muscles contorting. “Keep talkin’, tell me about the paczki.”

“The orange zest,” he sputters. “You always forget it.” He goes on like this as Jacob changes his bandages before his thoughts evolve into delirious mutterings and he stops speaking completely. He closes his eyes, the muscles in his face relaxing peacefully.

“You with me?” Jacob’s got a sinking feeling in his stomach that he can’t shake.

“Yeah,” says Cliff quietly, “just tired.”

He drags a sandbag over to the camp and inclines his brother’s head on it. “Let’s get you to bed then,” Jacob tells him, gun ready at his side to take watch.

“This was worth it, right?” Cliff asks weakly.

Jacob watches the rise and fall of his chest, slower now, strangely tranquil. He wants to say yes, but he doesn’t want his last words to his brother to be a lie. Instead, he pauses. “You can still have it, y’know.”

“Have what?”

“The bakery,” Jacob says, “and the two kids, a girl and a boy. And maybe if we make it long enough I'll even give you a niece or nephew to join them.”

Moonlight dances through the holes in the tarp, illuminating his brother’s sunken face. Slowly, Cliff smiles, shaking his head once more. “Ain’t that a nice dream,” he whispers. Jacob imagines what’s going through his mind and sees Violet, the girl he’d left behind, and a store with a glass front and a large blue awning that reads KOWALSKI BAKED GOODS.

“We’re almost there,” he says, reaching for his brother’s hand. “Just stay with me a little longer,” Jacob urges.

“Just a bit,” Cliff answers vaguely. “And you remember the orange zest in the paczki.”

When Jacob goes to check on him in the morning, he’s already passed in his sleep, but with the same slow smile on his face, and the same air of content serenity. Again, he hauls his brother onto his back, but Jacob finds he’s heavier, or perhaps that his heart is heavier. He cries as he navigates the trench. They are tears of guilt and regret, but also tears of relief. There are worse ways to die in war, Jacob thinks, than passing quietly in your sleep.

* * *

Jacob studies Queenie as she sifts the flour, cocoa, and baking powder together at the table. “Don’t forget the cinnamon, baby,” he reminds her, “or the salt.” He passes her both and she thanks him, adding the two key ingredients to the mix. He stands next to her, beating butter and sugar with a whisk in a large bowl. “You done?” he asks her. She looks at him blankly, blue eyes passive. “Queen.” She bites her bottom lip and looks downward. “Vanilla, please.” The blonde hands him the vanilla. “Hey, doll,” he says, and she gives him a weak smile, “does Tina like walnuts or pecans?”

Queenie looks away again, playing with her collar. She’s wearing one of his old button-downs over her dress as a smock. She seems to withdraw into the hand-me-down at the mention of her sister. She begins chopping up the pecans wordlessly, focusing on the knife and the cutting board. “You made this with your brother before?” she inquires suddenly, mixing in sugar, cinnamon, and the chocolate to complete the topping.

“Yeah, it was the last thing we baked together, actually,” Jacob admits. He beats the eggs in one at a time, pausing to scratch his cheek and inevitably leaving traces of flour on his face.

(“You look _stupid_ , cadet.”)

Queenie sticks a finger in the batter to taste, but instead wipes the batter on his forehead. She giggles at him brightly, standing on the balls of her feet to kiss his nose. His old shirt is splattered in chocolate batter, but it’s never looked better - so he tells her so. “You’re sweet,” she tells him, the way a professor might tell her students a scientific fact. “I like this,” Queenie decides, “doing things the No-Maj way. It’s a fine way to do things.”

Jacob shrugs. “It’s the only way to do things for me.”

She rolls her sleeves up and winks at him. “Not anymore, honey.” She waves her wand and the mess is gone. “Let’s put it in the oven,” Queenie says. He loves the way she looks in his clothing, holding the family babka in her left hand and a _magic stick_ in her right. Cliff would have liked Queenie. His mother and grandmother would have liked her, if they weren’t too jealous. Hell, is there a person on this planet that doesn’t like Queenie? Is it even possible to dislike someone so unequivocally perfect? “Thank you,” she chirps in response to his rambling monologue. “I think you’re perfect, too,” Queenie affirms, “I think you’re worth all the souls in the universe.” Jacob catches her by the wrist and twirls her and she erupts into giggles again. “Besides Teenie’s,” she adds as an afterthought.

“I really hope she likes the pecans,” Jacob says, “when we bring her home.”

* * *

The counter’s a mess with discarded ingredients, leftover flour and yeast sprinkled haphazardly, dusting Cliff and Jacob’s uniforms. Cliff shoves Jacob after he takes the babka out of the oven. “You look _stupid_ , cadet,” he says, throwing an arm around Jacob’s neck and mussing his little brother’s hair. They walk together to present the cake to the mess tent. “Gentlemen,” Cliff proclaims, “you are in for a _treat_ tonight!” The squadron cheers, hollering in excitement. “Drumroll, please.” The men bring their thundering feet down to the floor in anticipation.

Jacob strolls over and places the pastry on the middle of the table, grinning at Cliff. “A chocolate babka, as per the Kowalski brothers.” The soldiers hover over the cake, each helping himself to a serving.

“Fuck!”

"It’s the berries!”

“This is some good stuff, boys, hey-”

“Why aren’t we funding this?”

Jacob clears his throat and bangs on the table. “There’re a lot of shitty things in this world, and we’ve been through most of ‘em together,” he proclaims, “but at least we have pastries.” The men roar in agreement.

Cliff’s by his side in a minute. He raises his tot, gesturing for the rest to do the same. “Let’s drink to that - to pastries!”

“To pastries!” they cheer in response, knocking back their liquor and mocking one another with clumsy affection.

* * *

Frank’s wedding is a modest backyard affair. He marries Ruby, his childhood sweetheart, on a late Sunday afternoon in May, the month after Jacob returns from Poland. Jacob is Frank’s only friend from the war at the ceremony; the rest, he assumes, are dead. He’s best man at the ceremony, though Jacob is sure there must be someone, anyone, who knows Frank better than he does, especially given that they’d only spent three weeks in each other’s company before the groom headed back to America and Jacob loitered in Europe, washing dishes in French kitchens to make ends meet. He escorts Ruby’s maid of honor, Millie, down the aisle. She’s jittery and her rouge only seems to highlight her sallow complexion, but she sticks around to make sure Jacob doesn’t feel awkward or out of place during the reception. Millie drags an iron patio chair to sit next to him while the newlyweds have their first dance.

She discreetly places a flute of champagne in front of him. “Some apple cider,” she explains. There’s a twinkle in her eye. “That was a nice speech you gave earlier, by the way.”

He take a sip of the alcohol and nods at her. “Thanks doll.” Jacob lifts his glass towards her in appreciation.

The blonde rests her elbow on the table, holding her head up with her palm. “So you and Frank fought in the war together, huh?”

Jacob hears a gunshot. He sees Ernest with a bullet in his head. He sees miles of white crosses. He tastes the black soil. A hand on his knee shakes him from his reverie. Millie gazes at him expectantly, waiting for his answer. “Somethin’ like that. Met near the end of it, we didn’t do much fighting.” Just burying.

“Well, it’s awfully nice of you to come back just for this. Are you gonna go back?” Against her skin, her curled hair looks dry and brittle. The blonde color is littered with white strands. The combination of her hair and her complexion makes Mildred look washed out. Millie looks the way Jacob feels, sitting at this wedding full of strangers.

“Couldn’t if I wanted to, ain’t got the papers or the money,” he says, not bothering to conceal his current state of affairs.

Millie chitters interestedly. “You need someone to put you up? I got a friend who’s renting a place downtown near the Bowery,” she offers.

“Thanks again, Millie,” replies Jacob, looking a bit embarrassed in his gratitude. He strokes his mustache, suddenly feeling nervous.

“Well, us dreamers gotta stick out for each other. Ruby told me you wanna open a bakery, someday,” she says casually, though the curiosity in her voice is evident.

(“Just a bit,” Cliff answers vaguely. “And you remember the orange zest in the paczki.”)

“How about you? You a dreamer?” he asks, dodging the topic expertly.

She laughs. There’s a new light to her face, either the consequence of the sunset or the candles being lit at each table by the bride’s mother. “A poet, a writer, a dreamer,” Millie says, rolling her eyes at herself, “they’re all the same. But I’m a part-time secretary, too. I’m the gal you wanna have at the typewriter when the time comes.”

He chuckles in spite of himself. “A career gal, alright!”

Still laughing, she replies, “I guess you can say I’m a thoroughly modern Millie.” Beside her, two moths beat their wings next to the flame of the candle. One of them is caught by the fire and flies away, wounded. “Hey Jacob, can I ask you a question?” He nods, watching the remaining moth linger by the candlelight. “Why’d you wait so long to come home?”

(Cliff’s body is stiff and heavy on his back.)

Jacob leans towards Millie, taking her hand. “Can’t say, doll,” he says flirtatiously, “I haven’t got a clue.”

* * *

Queenie is, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman to walk the streets of New York City. She’s a choice bit of calico, a real Clara Bow, and she’s hanging off of Jacob’s right arm, asking him to dance. He leads her through the Charleston easily, her lively and bubbly demeanor attracting the attention of every man and woman in the speakeasy. Queenie, however, remains completely focused on Jacob, much to his delight. He’d asked her out on a date the minute she’d stepped into his store in her pink coat and smiled at him invitingly. As they dance, her golden curls bounce, and the sequins on her rose-colored gown move with them. As the couple is swept into a slower number, he holds Queenie close to him. They lazily sway to the music and she presses her ear to his chest. He represses the urge to scratch his neck again. “Have we done this before?” Jacob asks, immediately regretting his decision. “Oh, forget it, I’m runnin’ my mouth again.”

Queenie lifts her head and smiles at him and he feels a weight being lifted off his chest. “Don’t worry about it, Jake,” she tells him sweetly, “I love listenin’ to you run your mouth.”

(Queenie is at the dinner table in a navy blue dress. She giggles radiantly. “Oh, you slay me!”)

“You remind me of someone,” he says, “uh…” Jacob can feel himself sweating underneath his suit. _I’ve seen you in my dreams_ , he thinks. Mortified, he bites his tongue, not wanting to scare her off by being a sap or overbearing.

She grins at him knowingly. “Something out a dream, maybe?” she suggests airily.

Jacob looks around and blinks at her, paranoid. “I guess you got a ton of guys tellin’ you all the same things, huh?”

The blonde examines his face fondly and he catches the melancholy gleam to them, though brief. “Don’t be silly, honey,” Queenie reassures him. “There’s only one of you.”

* * *

An enchanted map hangs on the wall of Theseus’s study, pinned by places Grindelwald was last spotted and by areas where Tina and the others might be held captive. There is only one pin remaining, and they will most definitely recover the prisoners tomorrow at that precise location. This is what Theseus tells Jacob and Newt over Scotch as he takes Newt’s final tower in chess. Jacob watches in fascination as Theseus’s queen strikes down the tower angrily, crushing the structure to bits.

“The pieces - they,” he gapes, “they do that?” Newt sniffles as he takes a sip of his drink, handling his loss poorly. “You need a little help there, buddy?” Jacob eyes Newt’s remaining pieces: a knight, a bishop, and his queen and king. Theseus snorts and mumbles something about being beyond saving.

“Knight C3 to B5,” Newt commands halfheartedly. The knight dutifully slides across the board.

“Ah, Tina always did favor her knights,” says Theseus warmly, “I rather miss that woman.” The comment is meant to be said offhandedly, but Jacob knows there’s truth to his statement. Newt freezes across the chessboard.

Sensing the need to diffuse his discomfort, Jacob chimes in, “Hey, me too. She’d probably swoop in here and check you in one move.”

“All while lecturing me about the relative merit of _Stupefy_ versus _Petrificus Totalus_ ,” the Auror recalls fondly.

Newt loosens up again, tugging on his tie. “She hates the latter,” he says laughingly. Quirking his eyebrows up in his best Tina imitation, he starts in a terrible New York accent, “Too many syllables! It’s _hardly functional_.”

Theseus snickers at his impression. “I always tell her, you’re great at nonverbal, so what does that even _matter_ to you?” He sighs as he takes Newt’s knight. “That incorrigible woman,” Theseus says, wistful. He raises his Scotch to the witch and finishes the drink off.

“Fellas, let me get some things straight here,” Jacob says. “First off, the pieces _kill each other_ , okay, but more importantly...” He turns to Newt and places a hand on his shoulder, “ _You’re_ the one in love with Tina, right?”

Newt flushes approximately seven different shades of red. “Yes, I believe that’s conventional wisdom at this point. I mean, it would _appear_ so-”

“You’d better marry her by the end of all this, Newton,” Theseus says, also red in the face.

“Yeah,” adds Jacob, “or Queenie’s gonna murder you.”

The man bows his head pitifully. “I must say, she’s barely doing a decent job at restraining herself on the matter as it is.” Jacob and Theseus laugh sympathetically and peals of merry laughter burst from the Magizoologist. As Theseus teases Newt about his incapacity to sacrifice pawns in chess when they were children, Jacob slyly moves Newt’s queen. “Jacob, what are you doing?” He stares at the chessboard for a while before his eyes light up in realization.

“A stalemate,” Theseus observes, pleasantly surprised by the new development. Newt drunkenly gloats about his not-quite-victory and Theseus claps Jacob on the back. “You’re a good man, Kowalski.”

* * *

“There’s a million of us dreamers in this damn city.” These are the last words Mildred says to Jacob before he watches her retreating back. He notices her slight shiver, cold winter air cutting through the thin fabric of her baby pink cardigan. She’s right, he realizes. There’s a million of them without a nickel to their names, floating around mindlessly through the streets of Manhattan without any real direction. There’s a million people applying for a loan without collateral, a million people crammed into his tenement building, living paycheck by paycheck, and a million cannery workers that filter in and out of work, hands scrubbed raw, with residue sinking into their skin. He’s just one of many clinging to a pipe dream. He’s just another soldier returned from war with his brother’s ghost to shoulder. He’s an ex-cadet that should have died on the front, in the trenches next to Cliff, or in the tent with Ernest. Now, he’s merely a shadow without a soul; a dreamer.

* * *

The sickness shakes him suddenly in his old age. He can’t do much of anything these days besides sit in bed and listen to Queenie’s stories about their grandchildren. She relays to him news of Hogwarts house sortings and Quidditch team placements. After decades of marriage, Jacob can’t help but look at her in wonder. Memories of a New York City winter flutter around in his mind. He knows she can see them, too, but he recounts the tale to her anyway, because he also knows his wife loves hearing his thoughts outloud. “I remember when I first met you.” Her eyes light up as he recites to her the story of their first encounter, sparing no detail from his Murtlap bite to the pink silk of her slip to the Ruth Etting song that crackled in the background as Queenie prepared an apple strudel with potatoes for supper. “Before I met you, I was a dime a dozen type of guy,” he tells her, “and I would have been completely okay with that.”

The witch opens her mouth to protest. “You’d think after all this time, you’d stop sayin’ that hogwash,” she says, pinching his cheeks. There are silver streaks in her golden hair. It looks like starlight, Jacob thinks. “You’re such a romantic,” Queenie replies.

Jacob reaches for a stray lock. He feels a sharp pain in his chest and dissolves into a fit of violent coughs. He reads Queenie’s distressed facial expression. “Don’t be sorry, sweetheart.” Queenie can’t rid herself of the look of guilt. “My life wasn’t so bad, after all, I married you and made some pastries.”

“And children,” she adds, torn between laughter and incredulity.

“And _grandchildren_ ,” Jacob says, “in Gryffinpuff.”

Queenie smirks. “It’s Gryffindor, honey.”

He waves his hand dismissively. “Same thing. Everyone knows Pukwudgie is the best, anyway.”

“Wrong school, baby,” she says, scandalized.

Jacob grins. “Did I stutter?” Queenie’s eyes widen in understanding. She laughs and laughs, mirth coming off of her in waves. Suddenly, he feels very tired, as if he’s being carried away by the tide. Queenie drapes herself over him, burying her face in his wool sweater. “This was worth it,” Jacob tells her. She smiles into the crook of his neck.

* * *

 He’s caught in the drizzle after hours when he sees her again, pink beret sitting on a crown of golden curls. They’ve been on three dates when he remembers. He kisses her and remembers, in the thick of the rainfall, holding her. He hears her singing her school’s song and he hears Frank, the Thunderbird, letting out a final note before disappearing into the sky. As the rain pours down on them, Jacob hears one final statement, coy and daring.

“You’re one of us now.”


End file.
